


You Belong Somewhere You Feel Free

by stardustedknuckles



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Caleb is a Good Friend, F/F, First Meeting, Fluff without Plot, Modern Era, soft lesbians are self care, this fic was pure self indulgence, yasha works at a flower shop probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:13:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28763127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustedknuckles/pseuds/stardustedknuckles
Summary: It's Beau's first day in the city. The circumstances that got her here weren't great, but her old friend grew up in the same shitty place she did and she trusts him, so she's going to stay with him here for a while.Maybe a longer while than she thought, all things considered.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Caleb Widogast, Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, Caleb Widogast & Yasha
Comments: 13
Kudos: 168





	You Belong Somewhere You Feel Free

**Author's Note:**

> Look I wasn't quite this out of my depth when I moved to Chicago but I also didn't meet someone like this to be dumb in front of so who knows. There was a yard on the way to my favorite coffeeshop that was just resplendent with all kinds of flowers in the spring - mostly tulips. I moved there in March, so the day I ran across that yard (and the coffeeshop) for the first time was such a huge surprise and comfort coming from Georgia. 
> 
> Anyway Casukaga drew that happy Yasha with the flower pot and I have not known peace since.

Beau woke to a sense of peace like she'd never known.

Her body told her it was early, but there was no trace of lingering sleep in her thoughts or her limbs. She was simply awake, and the world was new.

A small fan on the windowsill blew cold, fresh air over her head, and unfamiliar birds greeted the morning in clusters bigger than she was used to over the gentle and unobtrusive swish of cars on the street. The dawn light that washed over the walls and ceiling of the guest room was alive with the sounds, and the fresh, foreign smell of the blanket resting over her gave the simple experience of waking in a new place an air of friendly adventure. 

Slowly, her memories of the previous day filtered in, and Beau carefully weighed each one before letting it settle. She didn't want to disturb this clean feeling if at all possible. She remembered the fight with her father - an explosive inevitability she'd been a fool to hope would stay in the vague possible future forever. She remembered the slap - the first and only one - and blindly packing through tears, the desperate phone call to someone she hadn't seen since she was a child, the uber to the airport and Caleb's refusal to tell her the price for the last-minute plane ticket even though she knew he was on a fixed income. 

"Come here to me," he'd said, and his achingly familiar accent had broken over her ears like a waterfall. "You can stay for as a long as you need. We will help you."

In the early light of this airy and fragrant place she found herself in now, the worst of the memories felt like they had happened to someone else.

The bruise on her cheekbone was definitely hers though, and Beau felt it as she sat up and swung her legs off the bed to stretch. The spot was tender under her fingers, but nowhere near the bruises she brought home after the nights she spent blowing off steam anywhere she could. She wasn't half bad, either. Made some good money taking and throwing punches there for a while.

Beau drank in the yard outside as she let down her sleep-mussed hair and put it back up, enjoying the simple pleasure of new air in her lungs. She smelled rich grass, damp earth, flowers in bloom. Gods, flowers probably just happened here, weren't grocery store novelties dyed implausible colors for dads to snatch up on the way to the checkout on birthdays and anniversaries. Beau wasn't a fan of flowers, but it was such a nice feeling to know there were places in the world where they could grow at all.

She sat with her hands on her knees and watched the world waking up for another few minutes, until soft rustling from the door alerted her to a presence. Her eyes snapped to the movement, but it was only Caleb's cat sauntering through pools of morning light to leap up on the bed beside her. "Oh hey," she said quietly. She held her hand out uncertainly for him to sniff, marveling at his delicate nose before he turned to bump his head along her finger with a rumbling purr. She scratched at his ears and realized she was smiling. "Frumpkin, right?"

He tilted his head back to chase her hand and placed his paws on her thigh, picking them up one by one and curling his claws in and out. Everything felt like a dream, but it had a substance to it that grounded her and made her feel all at once safe and a little giddy. 

Watching wasn't enough suddenly - Beau wanted to be fully immersed in the morning breeze and the birds and the sights of this outskirt neighborhood. She nudged Frumpkin gently from her lap and ruffled his ears once more before crossing the sun-warming old wood to the door leading to the front of the building. It swung open quietly, and the breeze was there to greet her like an excited friend.

She was smiling again, a small and soft thing made largely possible by the lack of anyone to see it. Though there were people on the sidewalk several yards away, they took no notice of her or anyone they didn't have to avoid running into. It occurred to Beau that maybe if a place had enough people, it was possible to go unnoticed in plain sight. As someone who grew up a big and promising fish in a small pond, this was a concept that intrigued Beau greatly.

The path leading from the front door was edged with some of the greenest grass Beau could recall seeing, and she stepped from the recessed doorway on bare feet to get a better look at the yard.

In the dark and the tumult of the previous evening, Beau had spared only the most cursory of glances over the yard as she'd followed Caleb meekly inside. A couple of stone benches, something tangled growing on the fence that ran down the sidewalk, some vague plant shapes along the front walls.

Now she could see that they were tulips - pink and white and yellow, reaching high like they were stretching and stirring in the lake breeze from within long, narrow beds of dark earth.

When Beau turned to look at the tulips on the other side, she was startled to find a woman in the process of pawing through them. She was knelt over the soil and digging in with gloves of light leather and a focused, determined expression. Her hair was loose and hung in black waves streaked with white, and in the shade of the building her age was impossible to tell. A long green tattoo peeked from her elbow under her hair and snaked along her forearm to vanish into a glove. Her fingers turned over the soil with a practiced ease, and it was than Beau noticed the small pile of dirt and root and scraggly green weeds laid out beside a soil-encrusted trowel.

Beau had just made up her mind to step back quietly and return indoors when the woman looked up suddenly and spotted her, standing there in the middle of the sidewalk in her bare feet and her shorts and her rumpled tank top. At least she'd fixed her hair.

"Oh hello," the woman greeted. She looked surprised and a little wary to have spotted Beau, like she was taking in information she might need later while maintaining neutral conversation.

Which was Beau's favorite tactic, and it caught her a little off-guard. Other people weren't usually as high strung as she was. She lifted a hand dumbly, taking in the blue stripe going from her bottom lip to disappear under her chin and trying to process the combination of muscles and tattoos and that soft voice when it came again: "Are you a friend of Caleb's?"

It was a question asked with a flavor to it that Beau recognized well from small town living. It suggested that this person knew Caleb and all of his friends and couldn't quite figure out where Beau fit into the lineup.

"Yeah," she finally managed, and the words came easier after that. "He's letting me stay for a while."

The woman's face brightened in secondhand recognition. "Are you…Beauregard, by chance?"

Beau blinked. In the span of an instant, the woman had gone from timeless and mildly intimidating to friendly and something close to Caleb's age. "Beau," she said automatically. "That's me." A disparate herd of people trickled down the sidewalk and again Beau couldn't help but marvel at the way they didn't stop to eavesdrop or start a conversation.

The woman followed her gaze over her shoulder and looked back at her. "He told me he had a friend coming last night, but I didn't realize," she waved a hand absentmindedly. "With the name."

Beau snapped out of her thoughts and looked back to the woman. It was no hardship, because the longer Beau looked, the more it became apparent that this woman was something special. "Oh. Yeah I forget," she said. She shrugged a little. "It's just my name - got used to everyone already knowing."

The woman sat back on her heels now and smiled, and suddenly the colors around them seemed almost too rich to bear. "I'm Yasha," she said. She gestured to her handiwork. "I come through and straighten Caleb's yard for him on the way to work sometimes. The city gets strict about how their regulations, and he's always busy." She spread her soil-stained gloves. "Besides, I like it."

"All of my stipend would go to paying fines if not for her," said Caleb. He stepped out of the shadow of the entrance and ruffled his sleep-mussed hair as he smiled fondly at Yasha. "I am very lucky to have her." He looked from her smile to what Beau was certain was her own stricken expression and chuckled softly. "Beauregard is a bit like I was when I arrived," he said to Yasha. "Give her time."

Beau felt her face burn, but Yasha spoke up immediately, bemused. "No, Beau has been a pleasure." The sincerity of her words took Beau by surprise. She'd been called many things on first meeting. "A pleasure" was new.

Now Caleb laughed. "I don't mean she is rude like I was. Just unused to friendliness without ulterior motive." He looked to Beau kindly. "Yasha is good people."

Beau stared at him, face still flaming. "Quick question. Have we technically known each other long enough for me to punch you in the arm, or is it too soon?"

He smiled infuriatingly and said, "It has been a long time since we were close enough for you to hit me. I would be lying if I said there wasn't a certain nostalgia for it."

Beau huffed. "Well now I don't want to. I'll save it." She looked away, which was a mistake because she could now see Yasha's delighted grin at the two of them. Gods, she was pretty. 

"I'm going back inside," she grumbled, which was the exact opposite of what she thought she probably wanted to do, but she seriously needed to find her feet before she met anymore of Caleb's apparently super hot friends. She made sure to turn and wave to Yasha. "It was good to meet you," she said. "Til next time."

If she'd hurt Yasha's feelings, there was no evidence in her face as she returned Beau's wave. "Welcome to the city," she said. "Oh! Before you go." Beau paused and looked back. "Do you have a favorite flower?" Now she looked anxious, like Beau's answer mattered to her somehow. 

Beau thought back to all of the flowers she'd ever seen in their plastic wraps, stacked in refrigerators and clumped unnaturally. "Not really," she said. She pointed to the tulips. "These are the first ones I've seen in the wild. They're a lot prettier than I thought, though," she added when Yasha's face turned into something unexpectedly soft and a little sad. She'd forgotten that most people would count that as a kind of deprivation. "I guess it would be them," she added awkwardly. 

"Okay," Yasha said, quieter now. "Thanks for indulging me."

Beau knew if she opened her mouth she would say, "actually my favorites are whatever's embroidered on your jeans," so she just flashed a tight smile and ducked into the entranceway and the relative safety of shadow.

There was a cliché for this somewhere, she thought as she sat on the edge of her borrowed bed and stared through the breezeway at the dining room. She'd grown up starving to be noticed just for herself, and look at her, crushing on the first person she was absolutely certain didn't know shit about her and wanted to ask her questions just because. Beau scrubbed a hand over her face and winced when she prodded her bruise in the process. The ugly reminder of how she got here pulled her the rest of the way out of her thought spiral, and she heard Frumpkin start up a purr from his place curled comfortably at the base of the pillow Beau had slept on. 

She had barely made it out the front door and already everything was different. Exciting, too - she kind of wanted to go out again immediately - but it was way too soon to be having crushes.

She heard the door open and shut gently, and Caleb's shadow encroached on the light coming in before he headed into the kitchen and began to rummage around. "Do you still hate eggs?" He called back, nonchalant.

Beau sighed and slid back off the bed to join him. "You're already letting me stay here," she said. "You don't have to cook for me."

He flipped a pan over in his hand and shrugged. "I am already cooking for myself. It is no trouble." 

He looked good, Beau realized suddenly. Which was an objectively weird thing to sort through because in almost every way, he was unkempt. His hair was longer than his military school would have ever allowed, his frame thin, his beard scraggly. 

But he spoke to people and made friends and had invited her into his home just to escape the same hellhole he'd grown up in, and those things more than anything told Beau he was doing a whole lot better than she was.

Beau rubbed the back of her neck and shrugged. "Alright, thanks man. And eggs are fine." He raised an eyebrow at her. "Like really fine," she insisted, smiling a little. "People grow into different tastes. Even me."

He elbowed her casually as he passed. "Like women with muscles?"

"Hey," Beau protested. "She had like a million other things going for her too, you know."

Caleb flipped on a burner and set the pan down. "Did you know," he mused. "I think Yasha has spoken directly to strangers outside of work all of twice. You made quite the impression." He smiled. "You should see her yard sometime. She lives a block from here, and it is just a mosaic from gate to gate. I bet she'd love to show you around." 

Beau didn't know what to say to a single word of that. She sat down at the table awkwardly.

Unperturbed, Caleb swiped a forkful of bacon grease from a jar on the cabinet and dropped it in the pan. "Speaking of showing around, I would love to take you through the city today," he said. "But my schedule is full. Will tomorrow do to get you keys?"

Beau blinked. "Keys?"

He shrugged amicably. "It is better than you having to come back from exploring earlier than you would like. I had spares, but I think Jester lost hers and took the new ones."

"No, I mean…"

Caleb turned over his shoulder. "I know what you mean, and I know what I said. You are welcome to stay here for as long as you need. You can go home if that is what you want, but there are so many opportunities here. It is incredible."

The room smelled like bacon now, and Beau realized she hadn't had anything since the bagel they'd snatched from a Dunkin at the airport last night. "I mean, it's worth seeing what's out here," she said finally. "Feels way different than going into town proper a few times a year. But it's really fine if I crash here?"

He reached for a plate and slid the eggs onto it before offering it to her and gesturing to the breadbox. "All those times you told me you wanted to get out of there at three in the morning," he said fondly. "Now's your chance."

Beau considered the yard, the way the lake air tasted, the whole world of a city she had to explore. And yeah, okay, she also thought of Yasha, but in more of an oblique, if-Caleb-can-make-friends-then-I-can-too kind of way.

And some of the other way too. Why not? She felt good today.

"Yeah," she said, hardly daring to consider that this could be hers too but ready to give it a try. "I guess it is."

* * *

Five o' clock found Beau stirring awake on the bed to a knock at the door. Caleb had said he'd be home around six, but Beau knew enough about higher education to know its scheduling was often screwy - and she did have his only key.

She slid reluctantly from under the covers, considered, and then wrapped them around her shoulders to shuffle to the door with a yawn. She tugged it open without thinking and froze.

Yasha stood in the entryway, a terra cotta pot balanced on one shoulder and an eager expression that turned to a grin at the sight of Beau.

Beau, who was again out of her element and this time with nothing resembling decent hair.

"Ah, hullo," Yasha said. "I didn't mean to wake you. I was just on the way home, and I - I brought you a housewarming thing." She frowned. "Roomwarning? A welcome gift." She reached up and pulled the pot down from her shoulder and held it out to Beau. 

  
"Uh...fuck," said Beau, like a genius. "Hang on, I -" she pulled the blanket off and wadded it into a loose ball to hurl it towards the bed before turning back. "Okay I have both hands now, sorry. You…brought me a thing?" 

She looked at it properly now and realized she was looking at flowers - real ones, growing in dark soil. In the early evening light their petals looked almost too red to be allowed. Unlike the flowers Beau had seen for sale, however, the richness of these was so unmistakably natural that Beau almost wondered if she'd actually _seen_ red before just now, or just some pale imitation. 

"You don't have to worry about keeping it alive," Yasha said. "They're pretty low maintenance and if you want to leave them outside, I'm happy to -"

"No," Beau blurted. "I want to…this is so nice, I don't - can you show me?" 

She looked up at Yasha just in time to see the last traces of an anxious expression melting away. "How to care for it? Of course," she said. "I uh…I didn't really know what you might like best, but I wanted to pick out something different from the tulips. This is a geranium. It blooms for a longer time and oh, I'm rambling. Um."

She was only rambling because Beau hadn't figured out how to kickstart her brain again yet. "You just met me today," she finally managed. Brilliant. Great work.

Yasha looked surprised. "Well you can only really meet someone once for the first time," she said. "And this is the same day, so…I think it still counts." She smiled at Beau, and for the first time she noticed that Yasha's eyes were two different colors. Fuck, this woman was amazing.

"Y-yeah," said Beau. "Of course. Do they…?" She wanted to smell them, but she worried they were the kind that didn't have a smell and she'd look like a moron. She lifted the pot towards her face a little, because that was somehow less idiotic.

Yasha's eyes lit up. "Yes, they do have a smell. These are just regular ones though."

"Regular?" Beau lifted the pot and inhaled hesitantly. "Whoah." She took a deeper sniff. "Even the dirt smells good." She hated the words as they left her mouth, but Yasha just looked pleased.

Beau realized suddenly that they had been standing in the doorway for way too long, but also it was Caleb's apartment and she wasn't sure what the rules were. Yasha must have figured out why she was looking around, because she stepped back a little and waved. "I come in all the time, but I can't stay tonight," she said. "Big evening plans."

Beau's heart sank in spite of her best efforts, but she kept her voice light. "Ah yeah. Date night, huh?"

Yasha blinked. "Oh uh…no. My roommate and I watch - I was mostly joking but it is a standing kind of thing? So, uh."

Beau's heart did a one-eighty to slam up through her throat and she shifted the pot to give a dopey little wave. "Yeah, of course. Thanks for this, I…nobody's given me a real flower before, like in a pot to grow."

Yasha gave something like a tiny bow before turning to walk down the path to the sidewalk. "You should probably get used to it," she called over her shoulder.

Beau grinned like a whole dumbass. "Can do," she called back. She looked back down at her new plant, still smiling. Day one in a new city and she had a new friend. Kinda piggybacked off of Caleb, but that was okay. More than okay.

Beau glanced up at the sidewalk just as Yasha looked like she might be turning away, but she could have been imagining it. Feeling light, Beau closed the door and set the flower pot on the shelf under the kitchen window.

Then she pulled out her phone and started googling how not to kill a…geranium, that was the word.

The results populated and Beau groaned. There were like seven kinds. She'd have to wait until she saw Yasha again to ask the important questions. Hopefully she'd get the chance soon.

Beau tucked her phone back in her pocket and reached out to stroke a petal, marveling at the cool, plush softness and the day's events as she looked out the old window. Yeah, she thought. She could see herself making this work.


End file.
